Columnist Mitchell Anderson writes that along with Rob Ford, Canada’s political leadership has hit rock bottom while ‘dumbing down democracy’
Fresh from the reality TV spectacle of the Senate scandals, Canadians have been offered a new series, the Rob Ford crack cocaine video saga. But there haven’t been resignations in shame or hasty retreats to “spend more time” with one’s family. The response seems to be ‘nothing to see here…move on.’ Rob Ford, for example, has said, “I have no reason to resign.” His popularity, meanwhile, seems to actually have increased. (more…)
Catherine Latimer of the national John Howard Society, has written 
Demonstrations were held across the country Thursday July 25, 2013 as a growing chorus of Canadians urged the federal government to release documents related to nutritional experiments done on aboriginal children decades ago. The protests, which varied in size, were sparked by a report published earlier in the month that said 1,300 children in northern Manitoba and at six residential schools across Canada were deprived of food and used as subjects to test the effects of minerals and vitamins in the 1940s and 1950s. [
Performance poet, community builder, change agent. Those are the words Victoria poet Jeremy Loveday uses to describe himself on Twitter and Facebook. And recently, with one YouTube video, Loveday has drawn on all three of those callings.
The tragic case of a young Aboriginal girl who suffered horrific abuse and neglect for 18 months at the hands of unfit care givers points to significant improvements that are required to British Columbia’s child protection system as well as to the protocol that guides the interprovincial transfer of such vulnerable children across Canada. 